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Monthly Archives: June 2017

Lately, I’ve been getting a lot of notification messages about new users joining this blog. I just checked the numbers and WordPress tells me that there are 7,264 of you out there in cyber-space. Wow! Hard to believe, over seven thousand.

Then I think: That’s a huge number for a blog with so little current activity. In last three days, this blog received only 19 visits. In the same period, 58 subscribers were added. How can that be a thing? How is it even possible? What’s up?

So this post is all about you, the readers and subscribers to this blog. That is the real yous out there. This is your chance to show that you are not web hack or a digital hallucination. How? Write a comment! I’d like very much to hear from you. What do you like about the blog? What would you like to see covered? What’s on your mind? Say anything you like within the bounds of good taste. Still, if you think the blog sucks, say so! 😉

The opinions of real people matter!

Best regards;

Peter Camilleri

Please note that comments with promotions, spam, or links will NOT be accepted.

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In April of this year, I completed gathering the raw data for my survey of gem downloads from my postings at the RubyGems web site. In the past, I have published progress reports at the 12 week and 24 week progress points. I am glad that the data collection is finally done. I admit, that it was only about an hour a week, but after several months it began to take on a level of tedium and boredom.

To be clear, data was collected for all 52 weeks, however, the data for week, 41, was lost in system crash. The data for that week is interpolated from the data of weeks 40 and 42.

The $65,536 question is WHY? Data collections and studies are are a lot of work and normally only undertaken with a goal in mind. My goal was simply to understand who was downloading the Ruby code I was writing and giving to the world. Unlike really popular authors, I did not have the luxury of looking to see thousands of downloads a day. My numbers were quite meager. My hypothesis was that by gathering detailed data, over a reasonably long span of time, some truths could be gleaned from that data that would reveal the nature of the user base. That is, assuming such a user base even existed.

You see, my fear is that I am just a crazy lunatic, working away in complete isolation, writing code that nobody will ever read. Just thinking about this scenario makes breathing difficult and causes my gut to twist and contort painfully.

The data itself reveals a brighter side. While subtle, there are some signs that there real are people out there at least looking at this code, and maybe incorporating it into their own projects.

There is a lot of data, too much for this blog or any single posting. In the coming days, I plan a number of articles looking at the data and coming to some concrete conclusions about Ruby Gem downloads and how to gage the success of a code release and maybe some tips for success in the world of software components.

Best regards

Peter Camilleri

ps: My library of gems can be found at Ruby Gems and the source code is at GitHub.